THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Whole World Is A Sourcebook!

As a creative, gaming-obsessed, pre-teen I sat in my corduroy shorts in prep school assembly seeking inspiration from the hymns we sang... just what was the to hit/damage bonus of a "bow of burning gold", what effect did "arrows of desire" have and just how fast was a "chariot of fire"?

In 1977, as well as discovering Star Wars, I had been introduced to Dungeons & Dragons and the whole world was suddenly "research material".

Everywhere I looked there were potential magic items or monsters for characters to contend with in dungeons drawn from every imaginable source.

My prep school co-dungeoneer, Tom, even ran me through a D&D adventure based on the first season of The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy (a radio serial he had introduced me to and also had a major impact on my life).

Television and books (particularly the sword and sorcery tales of Fritz Leiber, and a little later Harry Turtledove's first Elabon stories - Wereblood and Werenight) shaped many adventures and characters in those early years; then later comic books became a major source of inspiration as our games moved away from straight fantasy into the four-colour world of superheroes.

From these I still have three comic book standards that I would one day love to weave into a single, long-running roleplaying game: time travel, alternate dimensions, and cosmic entities.

Yet somehow, even in the games I've run for the Tuesday Knights in the past couple of decades, I have yet to squeeze all three of them in successfully; feeling that a campaign needs to progress at a steady pace for a considerable length of time before such contrasting, incredible elements can have their full, desired impact when introduced.

That said, all three feature heavily in The Sailor on The Seas of Fate, the second of Michael Moorcock's Elric books.

Even dreamier, more surreal and more psychedelic than Elric of Melniboné, this 190-page delight had me joining Elric on a ship sailing a strange ocean that linked not just islands, but worlds and planes of existence in time and space.

In a series of three adventures, Elric discovers he is but one face of The Eternal Champion, travelling to the Earth's future with three other incarnations of the Champion (Hawkmoon, Corum and Erekose) to battle two universe-threatening alien magicians; then he finds himself being chased by a Melnibonean sorcerer from history and swept up in a mythical love story; before finally taking a Heart of Darkness-style river journey to the legendary, lost birth place of his people.

These stories continue to leave me breathless, blown away by the absorbing text, the clever imagery and mental stimuli they spark in my enfeebled brain.

It also made me appreciate, perhaps, why I have never successfully tackled such cosmic themes as I desire to in my roleplaying games - they are best left to the master storytellers!

The Final Programme (1973)

We may still be waiting (optimistically) for a live-action Elric movie, but another aspect of Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion found his way into the movies in The Final Programme.

Although set in the "far future" during the slow death throes of civilization, this wonderful film is cut from the same cloth as such '70s spy-fi fare as The Prisoner, The Avengers, Jason King and even Doctor Who.

Written, designed and directed by Robert Fuest (of Dr Phibes fame, but has he also directed some episodes of The Avengers back in the late '60s), The Final Programme (also known as The Last Days Of Man On Earth) is mesmerizing in its psychedelic weirdness, yet not to the extent that the story is lost to the visuals.

The story revolves around biscuit-obsessed Nobel Prize-winning physicist and playboy adventurer Jerry Cornelius (Jon Finch) who is approached by a team of scientists, fronted by the sultry and possibly not-quite-human Miss Brunner (Jenny Runacre), to retrieve some key microfilm from the vaults of his recently deceased father's mansion.

It so happens that Jerry was planning to go there anyway as he wanted to rescue his sister Catherine (an all too brief cameo by Sarah Douglas) from the clutches of his dangerous, drug-addicted brother Frank (Derrick O'Connor).

The microfilm contains the key to a scientific formula that could save mankind, by kickstarting the next stage of evolution as an hermaphroditic, self-replicating, immortal human being. Unfortunately, there is still one ingredient missing...

For my money, this film was pure Moorcock, especially the non-traditional climax which these days would have had people crying out for a sequel but in the good old days was left suitably open and provocative.

The story embraces its bonkers' excesses, but as I said above it doesn't let this wash away the central storyline of the piece as happens all too often is such outré movies.

It certainly helps that the two central performers - the amazing Jenny Runacre and the suave Jon Finch - are so charismatic, with Finch's Cornelius almost certainly being an inspiration for Austin Powers.

As well as Sarah Douglas's brief appearance, the eagle-eyed - and eared - will also spot future star (and mother of Georgia Moffett, David Tennant's wife) Sandra Dickinson in her first big screen role, as a waitress in a mud-wrestling-themed restaurant.

While Moorcock himself was not a fan of Fuest's take on the story, he praised Finch for his portrayal of Jerry Cornelius during an interview at the BFI about the movie in 2010.